Breuer Building Expands the Imagination, and the Budget, of the Met

Taking on the Breuer building is a big deal even for a behemoth like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with an annual operating budget of $370 million.

It will cost $17 million each year to run the Met Breuer — which opens March 18 — in the former home of the Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue, a significant additional expense for the institution, which also runs the Cloisters. The amount approximates the budgets of major institutions like the Dallas Museum of Art or the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

The Met has also spent an undisclosed sum on its upgrade of the Breuer building — about $15 million according to some estimates — not to mention the millions it spent on a rebranding campaign (the museum wouldn’t give an exact figure) that includes its controversial new logo.

“It’s expensive,” said Daniel Brodsky, the Met’s chairman, adding that the museum has raised all the money separately to cover the costs, including an expected operating loss. The Met is projecting an overall deficit this year of $8 million.

Integrating the Breuer has involved considerably more than giving the Brutalist building a new coat of paint. The museum spent the last several months rethinking everything from cooling systems to the training of 110 staff members to its curatorial approach to contemporary and modern art.

“How does a museum that’s 145 years old invent a new museum?” said Daniel H. Weiss, the Met’s president. “It’s a very different kind of space and programming for us.”

The investment is worth it, Met officials say, as a way to step up the museum’s activity in contemporary and modern art. The inaugural exhibitions signal an increased commitment to art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

“It’s a thrilling moment for the Met,” its director, Thomas P. Campbell, said at a media preview on Tuesday, “re-engaging in a new way with the art of our own time.”

The building is meant to be the Met’s hub for all things contemporary while the museum is constructing a new wing for that art in its main Fifth Avenue flagship, which is expected to be completed in the next few years at a cost of $600 million.

The Met says it has significantly upgraded the building’s infrastructure and raised enough to run the Breuer for the duration of its eight-year lease. Still, the effort has been substantial. “It has been a difficult challenge to do all of this in a constrained time frame,” Mr. Weiss said.

And “some of the investments were more significant than we anticipated,” Mr. Weiss added, like updating the restaurant, to be run by the team behind Estela, which will not open until the summer.

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The Met Breuer, in the former home of the Whitney Museum, will open on March 18.CreditPhilip Greenberg for The New York Times

Since the Met Breuer will be dedicated almost entirely to special exhibitions, the museum had to consider “how do we support the rotation of art in and out of the building?” Mr. Weiss said.

The Met Breuer prompted the museum to re-evaluate its approach to visitor services, training a team of new and existing employees to provide information on subjects including admission, membership and performances.

But the Met’s future in the Breuer building remains uncertain. Will the museum exercise its option to extend once its lease is up? Can the museum afford to run three locations long term?

Will the Whitney, now in the meatpacking district, take back the space and operate it as an uptown satellite, or will it expand to the north into space currently owned by the city? Can the Whitney afford to run two museums?

And if both the Met and the Whitney decide they no longer need or want the Breuer building, what will happen to it, especially in light of the 2008 stipulation by Leonard A. Lauder, the Whitney’s chairman emeritus, that the building could not be sold for the foreseeable future?

Mr. Lauder conditioned his $131 million gift to the Whitney — the largest donation in its history — on keeping the building, which he considered the Whitney’s spiritual home and architectural identity. He was concerned about the future of the Breuer building, since Whitney officials had periodically considered selling or renting it to a commercial establishment.

In an interview, Mr. Lauder said it was too soon to predict the outcome. “In two or three or four years, everyone will really know what they need to do, and that’s when they will talk about it,” he said, adding of the Met, “I have no expectations other than they’ll be good tenants, and we’ll be a good landlord. They fixed the place up beautifully.”

Robert J. Hurst, the chairman of the Whitney’s executive committee, said, “There’s a good chance we’ll be financially in a position where we could run two sites if we want to.” Of the Breuer building, he added, it was likely “we will come back and reclaim it.”

So far, the reactions to the building’s refurbishment by the firm Beyer Blinder Belle have been enthusiastic. “It probably hasn’t looked as good since 1966,” said Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, referring to the year the Breuer building was completed. “They’ve really cleaned it up and refreshed it.”

Mr. Weiss said the Met Breuer expects better attendance than the Whitney’s annual average of 350,000, in part because it will be open six days a week when the Whitney was open five (the Met is open seven).

But still unclear are the Breuer building’s revenue implications for the museum, since a ticket to one Met location (suggested admission, $25) admits a visitor to the other two on the same day. It is one of the many unknowns.

“This is something of an experiment,” Mr. Weiss said, “to determine whether this is a space which makes long-term sense for us to occupy.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: New Bills to Match Big Vision at the Met. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe